This watchdog blog, by journalist Norman Oder, offers analysis, commentary, and reportage about the $4.9 billion project to build the Barclays Center arena and 16 high-rise buildings at a crucial site in Brooklyn. Dubbed Atlantic Yards by developer Forest City Ratner in 2003, it was rebranded Pacific Park in 2014 after the Chinese government-owned Greenland Group bought a 70% stake in 15 towers. New York State still calls it Atlantic Yards. Contact: AtlanticYardsReport[at]hotmail.com

From the article:“In [the Oro] building there are [many] apartments that are exactly alike — and the people who like them, bought them and now, what do you do with the rest?” [broker Roslyn Huebener] added. “They are not original like other buildings with four or six different units. They’re putting a glut in their own buildings.”

Downtown super-broker Chris Havens told The Brooklyn Paper the price cuts aren’t a case of desperation on the part of the developer, but a dose of common sense.

“Reality is setting in on pricing,” Havens said. “The coming year will see a lot more aggressive pricing to get down to the market price.”

But there's nothing in the Brooklyn Paper, nor its Community Newspaper Group (aka Murdoch-owned) sibling Courier-Life, about the dubious KPMG report released Wednesday concerning the market for condos and rentals in the Atlantic Yards project. That report claimed that the Oro was 75% sold.

Nor did the two newspapers cover the Empire State Development Corporation's September 17 vote to approve the 2009 Modified General Project Plan.

In March, Brooklyn Paper editor-in-chief Gersh Kuntzman, who regularly reminds us how both he and the paper are "award-winning," asserted that "our coverage of Atlantic Yards has not 'tailed off.'"

1 comment:

The decrease in coverage of important twists and turns in the Atlantic Yards story in the Brooklyn Paper is palpable since Murdoch bought it. It is glaringly obvious, a disservice to readers and a shame, but sadly not surprising.